Jesus and Exclusivity

Ray ComfortBy Ray Comfort4 Minutes

Excerpt taken from Why Would Anyone Follow Jesus? by Ray Comfort

 

When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6), He nullified every other religion’s teaching that they lead to God, to the truth, or to Heaven. Jesus was saying it’s His way to Heaven or the highway to hell. And this wasn’t a slip of the divine tongue. John 14:6 does not give any wiggle room for a translation error. Check out this description from quora.com:

The Greek text is rather unambiguous and there doesn’t seem to be any textual variants in the manuscripts. The standard English translation is almost a literal translation of the Greek:

λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς: ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή: οὐδεὶς ἔρχεται πρὸς τὸν πατέρα εἰ μὴ δι’ ἐμοῦ. (John 14:6)

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except [literal: if not] through me. (New American Bible).

The verse is not an isolated doctrine. There are many other verses like it. Here’s a small sampling:

  • “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers” (John 10:7–8).
  • “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons” (1 Cor. 10:20).
  • “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).
  • “Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 1:9).

Was Jesus being exclusive? Yes. His exclusivity is paradoxical in that the modern world says such intolerance should not be tolerated. To preach His words is to be a narrow-minded, hateful, antiscience, fundamentalist bigot. But we have no choice. There are many who try to make the words of Jesus more palatable and less exclusive. Those who profess to have faith in Jesus while saying there are many ways to God may have the world’s approval for now, but that isn’t the approval that matters. Look at what Jesus said about those who compromise His words: “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:26, emphasis added).

Intolerance is “an unwillingness to accept views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one’s own.” But here’s the deal—we should not accept beliefs that are not true. In refusing to do so, we are actually giving the world the tough love it needs so badly. What the world sees as bigotry is in reality our desire to see lost sinners saved from a very real hell.